All our scans are available upon request. This service is free of charge and it is our intention to keep it that way. There is no limit to the number of scans that can be requested. However, you could do us –and indirectly yourself– a favour.

When we started this project, we anticipated that the municipalities of the region would allow us to digitise their records and put them online. In our opinion, the advantages are obvious: the participating municipalities receive a good quality digital copy of their records, allowing them to store the originals in a safe place for the generations to come. In addition they obtain, free of charge, via BSkempen a digital counter, reducing the pressure on their own staff. Finally, the municipalities can demonstrate active involvement in e-government. Working e-government! Our young site is already a busy one: there are not many archives with an excess of 1400 visitors each month.

We wrote letters to all the 43 municipalities of the Antwerpse Kempen (Antwerp Campine). The city of Geel was done as a pilot project, mainly to demonstrate what could be done. After that, the municipality of Olen jumped on the wagon. We are still grateful for that. But that was it. We now work with the material supplied by some societies interested in regional geography and history, or we scan in old microfilms. However, good quality scans require that we have access to the original records and for that, we need the permission and the co-operation of the municipalities.

We firmly believe that the municipalities are not against this project, but that they either do not have the time to get involved, or that they are not convinced that it may offer an advantage.

It is with the latter that you could help us.

You can support us by sending an e-mail to the officer in charge of cultural affairs of the municipality whose registry you would like to see appear on BSKempen. Please tell them that BSKempen is willing to scan their records and make them available to everyone via the internet. If you found BSKempen a useful web site for the genealogist, please tell them about that too. We do realise that one isolated e-mail will not trigger wonders but mails from various countries may have an effect. Hopefully, the net result will be that more data become available on this web site. .

Below is a list of the municipalities that form the region of the Antwerpse Kempen, the name of the person in charge of cultural affairs, and his or her e-mail address. We do thank you in advance for your co-operation!

We recently removed Hulshout and Laakdal from the list below. Laakdal (Vorst, Veerle, Eindhout, Varendonk) gave us permission to digitise their original records, Hulshout (Hulshout, Westmeerbeek, Houtvenne) has let us known that they intend to do the same. Clearly, your -emails have an effect.Thank you!